


I found you

by laNill



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Emotional Constipation, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluffy Ending, M/M, Post-Season/Series 06, Pre-Season/Series 07, Soft keith, shiro needs a hug, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 05:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15526575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laNill/pseuds/laNill
Summary: His body could have changed, his hair lightened, his tiredness pulling the skin of his face, the features chipped by the harshness of the events; but his essence, his soul that was shining and as huge as galaxies, iridescent like the stars, didn’t change.Nothing, in every crossed universe, in every tear shed, in every wound breaking his chest; nothing of this had ever been in vain.-I found you.





	I found you

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this little thing after s6, so I had not yet known what had been shown or said in the first episode of the s7 during the con.  
> And I still have to recover my heart.  
> Last but not least, this translation was kindly made by Seebaru (<3)

The Earth showed itself in its brightest colors, with the shine of the Sun kissing the coasts of the Asian continent.  
The outlines, which were sketched as rough lines at first, got more defined. They shaped themselves to take on a form, and uneven, sharp-cornered consistencies.  
But that wasn’t home yet.  
He could catch its flavor after he went through the stratosphere, like a white-stained red comet. The green color of the grass, the planes and the conifer forest was unfolding itself in increasingly defined patches, although shapeless, the land was compact and sunburned, black, a plain scratched by rock spikes and jagged heights.  
Those were all colors he hadn’t forgotten, but they opened his chest in a burst of nostalgia. While landing, in the midst of having to reorganize eight people and his wolf in his own house, Keith took for himself an instant to brush away the dust of his memories and observe them in a new light.  
The carmine red and ocher of a blooming dawn, the glare of the liquid orange that softened the mountainous horizon of that rugged land, the flare of the first blue lighting up the sky, limpid and pure like mercury glass. Then there was his house, solitary, in the quiet silence in which it had stayed for all those years, the lone linden tree as its only companion sharing the wait for his return.  
It was home.  
Keith furrowed, catching an uncertain clot as soon as that thought came to the surface, immediately smothered from the call of Lance in an accusatory ask for help.  
He pushed away that thought as he went to organize the situation, along with the uncertainty that darkened his gaze for an instant.

The wrench produced a muffled friction when he turned the entrance bolt. The not-best position made him lose more time than expected on that labor he set for himself. The prolonged time that had him stay away from home had had repercussions on the hover bike parked on the left side as well. The tank was partially encrusted: he had cleaned it up, stripped some gasoline stuck on the bottom and positioned it again; the breaks had kept a good grip, the propellers for the landing needed to be oiled up but they turned smoothly. A problem came up with the phasing controller valve: the timing of its opening was off, he felt it when he got up for a ride test in the early afternoon.  
It took a while to change it, more for finding a spare part than for the actual complexity of the labor. He was used to fix it.  
He indeed liked silencing his mind and focus it only on what he considered a mission. It was a way to keep himself busy, and it had been long since he could say that he couldn’t just do nothing and wait for something to happen.  
He could call it a natural instinct, an electric itch that made his body move to feel comfortable; in that case, though, he could say he wasn’t on edge, he wasn’t always on the door, ready to spring at the smallest unknown flash and jump on his lion.  
He liked running his hands on the worn, yet shiny paint of the flaming red bike body. It was something that had been his since long, the proof of his bond with an affection he had been afraid to lose.  
It was a balm, a palliative, the anchor that kept him floating.  
“You’re treating this beauty well.”  
The voice came from up close, brushing his ears in a jolt of slight surprise. He gave himself a push with the legs, and the bogie he was leaning on slid out of the cockpit.  
The figure of Shiro filled his eye span, the light of the early afternoon brushing his stern profile. A light spasm clenched his chest as he looked at his hand, the last one he had left, running on the red metal sheet. “Better than I would have, I knew I was leaving it in good hands.”  
“Yeah, well, I crushed it a little last time we used it. But it’s a tank; it’ll survive, even against the lions of Allura.” His gaze rested on the scratched paint under the supports of the propellers and the lower belly, almost out of oil, the handlebars almost worn there, on the handle.  
Even though Shiro wasn’t conscious when they had freed him from the Garrison and took him away, they had told him about the reckless race – five people on a bike that couldn’t carry more than two – and he had smiled at the thought; he smiled at that moment as well as he recalled it. A warm shade in his onyx gaze, the hardness of the cheekbones softened by the kindness pouring from those eyes that were still there, in which the soul was still beating, again.  
“She stayed with you, too.”  
Words that echoed in the veins, an echo of what he had murmured to him in that cavern, the metallic voice coming from the helmet, the wound scratching his voice.  


_– Patience yelds focus. –_  
_– It stayed with you, huh? –_  


That recommendation he usually told him during practice, that had saved him countless times, even from himself and his loneliness.  
“Many things stayed with me, since then.”  
 _Every thing you taught me_ , he said to himself in an unexpressed thought that he kept to himself, standing, his gaze low, lingering, recoiling from something he still hadn’t come to terms with. The hands were dirty with oil. He brushed them with the cloth.  
“What about the others?”  
“They went to the village. Allura was curious about our culture and Lance offered to take her there. Coran joined them, Pidge went to his mother’s and Hunk went grocery shopping for this evening. My mother is patrolling the zone.”  
The Garrison was a problem they should have faced as soon as they landed, but that was on hold because of the avalanche that could have crushed them; they had just come out safely from the fight with Lotor, and Sendak had probably unleashed his riotous dogs to find them in every corner of the universes. Using the invisibility skill of the Green Lion had been useful so that they weren’t identified by the radars of the academy and the national defense.  
A single day, just one to fix what the problems with the Garrison could have brought them in hope of their support.  
“The only one who is making himself useless is me.”  
Keith looked at him with soft admonishment. “You still have to rest, you haven’t got your strength back.”  
“I’m fine,” that comfort soothed his soul for an instant. “I slept enough to make you do all the unloading work. Although, with only one arm, I wouldn’t have been much useful...”  
The gaze inevitably fell on the missing limb. A string of fragments of a movie reel unrolled backwards reminded him of the impact of the blades, the sizzle of burning metal, the mouth moving without a sound in that silent prayer that deviated in an instinctive declaration, in a painful necessity; then the reaction, the fight ending with the blade of the sword of Marmora shearing off the mechanic arm.  
He lowered his gaze, not daring to remember more.  
“I’m sorry...”  
With surprise, he heard a huff and then a low gurgle, similar to a short laugh vibrating in his chest. Keith raised his gaze, meeting Shiro’s, who was looking back, careful and melancholic.  
“I should be the one saying that.” The smile that slowly shattered, the bitter taste bending it. “I almost killed you, there, I’m not the right person to whom anyone should apologize.”  
“That wasn’t you. It was Haggar controlling that body.”  
“I could have killed you… that body, with my face and my voice, could have killed you.” The hand rested on the temple in a wrinkle of tense regret, among that hair now as white as the moon.  
Keith got closer to him, his gaze hard yet softened by anxiety and indolence as he saw that distress in his eyes and the tiredness hardening the corners.  
“It wasn’t you who pointed the sword against me. I know you wouldn’t have, I know you wouldn’t, _ever_.”  
Shiro raised his gaze on him. Handsome and brave, Keith, he had untamed flames in the depths of those dark irises of his that he managed to bridle, shape, tame with only his will and sacrifice.  
He raised a hand, the eyes running over the line of his nose and then deviating toward that mark on his cheek that the rough fingers touched; like a light caress.  
“I didn’t want any of this to happen to you.”  
The dark eyelashes of the younger man fluttered, impalpable, and so did his heart, unstably shaking inside his thin rib cage, thumping the blood fast to his cheeks. And like a deer listening in the wind, Keith lowered his head in response to that gesture, his eyelids disclosed, his forehead wrinkled for a solid yet sorrowful concern.  
“You faced more than what you deserved. Now everything’s okay, we’re back home; we’ll sort out anything.” The confident voice, strong with trust, barely cracking.  
It wasn’t fear, nor any other feeling that could recall an imminent end.  
It was burning heat, enough to die for. Enough to feel the chest swell and the tears press against the eyes.  
His hand, smaller than his, went to lean against the back of the older man’s, slightly squeezing just to feel him, to impress the heat on the skin, the gentleness beyond the calluses, beyond the scars, the wounds that wouldn’t heal to disappear anymore.  
But that didn’t matter, nothing mattered anymore besides his close presence.  
The awareness of having him there again, to perceive the heat of his hands against the face, the smell of his skin stinging his nose, his image filling his eye span and his soul; to _feel_ him, after all that time.  
An indulgent smile bent Shiro’s lips to comfort him, his gaze full of the partially covered face of the young man, who had become a boy enough to transform into a man.  
His chest filled up with him, with his soulful decisiveness, of his face with rounded angles, of the wrinkle that often dirtied the beauty of his proud, animated eyes.  
“I’d really want to hug you right now.” He murmured in a hint of whine that Keith welcomed with a huff, concealing a smile.  
It was still hard to handle that lack, even though he had already had chance to experience it, long before. Only at that moment he felt it more than his absence itself, in that not being able to do what his body wished to of his, in that keeping him close in his arms and feeling him against the chest, his letting go to the support that he could give and that he would always give him.  
“I can do it for you.” Keith answered, his eyes lifting to look at him from below the fan of eyelashes.  
The arms enveloped his shoulders, the hands lifted and Shiro went to him.  
Then they were lips against lips, a gentle gesture, hesitant, lingering and shamefully waited for.  
Keith shook against his chest, in that brushing of lips of a kiss that was sweet like the firs dawns, like the crimson shade coloring his cheeks. He let himself go, kissing him with the same rapture, with desperate sweetness and tentative shame, despite being of a light meekness given by his inexperience; the last time he had brushed the edge of the lips was the night before Shiro’s departure for the mission in Kerberos.  
His hand, big, was still holding his cheek. His touch set him on fire, like an unwavering flame in the open sea. He handed him his heart, in that kiss, leaving it on the lips and against the thin eyelids that were shivering with temerity and shyness. And Shiro was brushing him with his lips, in that silence made of weights of those unspoken words that couldn’t be measured. He was holding him in his hands like the most precious thing, more than his own heart.  
That mouth, Keith thought in a fleeting, instinctive thought, tasted like constellations, like those stars that burn themselves to shine even more brightly and wonderfully.  
It had the taste of the strong yet healthy sensations, that overwhelm without hurting.  
The distance filled with ephemeral breaths, with a hot echo of voice to brush it.  
“ _Yorak._ ”  
A sweet whisper.  
Keith shuddered, lifting his face in a questioning look. “What?”  
“That’s your name, right? I mean, the one they should have given to you.”  
The dark eyebrows furrowed, the stupor and doubt turning into uneasiness.  
“Who-”  
“Your mother.”  
A complaining mumble gurgled in his throat, his gaze turning away in a thin defense meant to hide the red that got darker on his face; his eyes seemed to be made of incandescent stars when he blushed, Shiro had thought that many times, now more than ever.  
He brushed his cheek again in a pet, his thumb brushing the skin below the eye.  
“I like it… _Yorak_.”  
“Yeah, okay, stop calling me like that. It’s embarrassing.” He fidgeted under his touch, but he didn’t step back, the bike behind his back.  
Shiro laughed, and his laughter vibrated against the rib cage, making his heart trip two, three times. He loved hearing him laugh, too many times had he suffered the lack of that low vibration echo in every fiber of his own body.  
“Keith.” The heart stopped.  
That sound, that inflection, that low, hot, intimate modulation to pronounce his name.  
The breath getting thinner, shattered against the throat and the chest, the irises cutting with shame, shaking of impalpable emotion.  
There wasn’t anything sweeter and saver, in this world, than the sound of someone you love calling your name with an ardor rounded with careful kindness and heart wrenching sweetness.  
For an instant, an impalpable apprehension streaked his irises.  
He looked into his eyes, looking for something that could confirm to him who did he really have in front of him, while a thin fear was creeping under his skin.  
He didn’t fear him; he feared he could read unfamiliarity in those eyes and see that he wasn’t the same person anymore.  
But all he saw was the obsidian mirror of his gaze reflecting his soul, bare and crystalline, as he had always loved it. The one of the Shiro he had always loved.  
His body could have changed, his hair lightened, his tiredness pulling the skin of his face, the features chipped by the harshness of the events; but his essence, his soul that was shining and as huge as galaxies, iridescent like the stars, didn’t change.  
Nothing, in every crossed universe, in every tear shed, in every wound breaking his chest; nothing of this had ever been in vain.  
“I found you.” The voice cracked again, the hands went to his face and held it, forehead against forehead, the eyelashes shaken by a light shiver like grass wet with dew brushed by the first blow of the morning. “ _I found you again._ ”  
“It’s nice to be here again.” Shiro whispered meekly, “It’s nice to be back to you.”  
The eyes, that weren’t leaving even for a moment that loved face, bent with emotion. A kiss against the closed eyelid, another one against the heated cheek, and lastly against the disclosed lips of the young man that welcomed him, waiting nothing else but that.  
Like when you go back home and all the pieces get back in a row in the moment you cross the entrance, and you leave every worry outside of the door; and you smile, knowing you’re safe.  
To Keith, Shiro was that.  
And he had found it again.

He was home again.


End file.
